Cancer is a major public health problem in the United States and in the world. Currently, one in 4 deaths in the United States is due to cancer. Each year, the American Cancer Society estimates the numbers of new cancer cases and deaths expected in the United States in the current year and compiles the most recent data on cancer incidence, mortality, and survival based on incidence data from the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries and mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics. A total of 1,596,670 new cancer cases and 571,950 deaths from cancer were projected to occur in the United States in 2011. Overall cancer incidence rates were stable since late 1990s. The reduction in the overall cancer death rates since 1990 in men and 1991 in women translated to the avoidance of about 898,000 deaths from cancer. Despite an obvious progress, approximately 560,000 people died of cancer in 2006 in the United States alone. Aging of the general population and development of new forms of cancer contribute to the problem.
Romidepsin has been shown to have anticancer activities. The drug is approved in the U.S. for treatment of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL) and peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL), and is currently being tested, for example, for use in treating patients with other hematological malignancies (e.g, multiple myeloma, etc.) and solid tumors (e.g., prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, etc.). It is thought to act by selectively inhibiting deacetylases (e.g., histone deacetylase, tubulin deacetylase), promising new targets for development of a new class of anti-cancer therapies (Bertino & Otterson, Expert Opin Investig Drugs 20(8):11151-1158, 2011). One mode of action involves the inhibition of one or more classes of histone deacetylases (HDAC).
As cancer remains a major worldwide public health problem, there is a continued need for effective therapies to treat cancer.